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Troian Bellisario needs no introduction. The award-winning storyteller has been a staple in the industry for over two decades. She’s brought dynamic characters and stories to life in projects including Pretty Little Liars, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, and Clara. This June, she leads the extraordinary cast of Doula.

After dating for a matter of months, thirty-somethings Deb (Troian Bellisario) and Silvio (Arron Shiver) are expecting their first child. When their elderly midwife, Penka, passes away suddenly, Silvio makes the hasty decision to hire Penka’s son, Sascha (Will Greenberg), as their live-in doula. Deb is nonplussed, as Silvio didn’t consult her before hiring, but before long, Sascha’s unconventional style wins her over. As Deb and Sascha grow closer, and the pregnancy nears its inevitable conclusion, Silvio starts to feel like the odd man out. His continued efforts to exert control over the pregnancy lead to a blow-up fight in which he forces Deb to choose between him and Sascha.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Troian about Doula, how motherhood has impacted her craft, how she vets the projects that she wants to be a part of, and more.

PC: Tell us about Doula and your character in the film.
Troian: Doula is a film about a non-traditional couple who are having a non-traditional pregnancy. They hire a male doula to help get them across the finish line and welcome the baby into their lives.

I play Deb who is a swearing, basketball-playing pregnant woman, who is just trying to make it through this pregnancy alive.

PC: You actually filmed this project while being pregnant. Did that bring a deeper connection to this character? How did you use your own experiences with your pregnancy to shape Deb’s journey?
Troian: I don’t know how it wouldn’t. Every time I was on screen, I was actually carrying a baby inside my belly. The interesting thing was that I was having to act like I was much further along. It was really weird because I was about four months pregnant with my daughter. When I was filming the majority of the film, I was supposed to be full term, so it was a bit weird. It informed me in a lot of ways, I think, always knowing that I was carrying a baby. I didn’t know it was a girl at the time, but I was carrying along another little passenger while filming. It helped me connect in a deeper way to Deb and think about how she was feeling, bringing a child into this world.

PC: Speaking of motherhood, have you found that your relationship with your craft has changed since becoming a mother?
Troian: Absolutely. Just the amount of time that I am able to donate to preparing myself for an audition or even preparing myself for a role is so different from before I had kids. I have to concentrate in a totally different way. I have to focus in a different way because I have less time. It’s sort of like unlocking a new level in a video game. You’re like, “Oh wait, I feel this way too.” I didn’t know that I had access to these types of emotions. But that’s what my kids make me feel. Bringing that experience into whoever I play, whether they have kids or not, does change the point of view completely.

PC: If your kids wanted to follow in your footsteps, what advice would you give them?
Troian: Get used to feeling out of control and try to find your bliss. If you want to do this, you have to be very sure that you’re not doing it for approval because you’re never going to get enough of it. You’re not doing it for people to like you because it’s going to open up a whole world of rejection. You have to be doing it because you’re having fun and it brings you joy.

PC: Great answer. You’ve worked on projects of all sizes. What is it about independent filmmaking that excites you as a creative?
Troian: It excites me because it’s so much more of a creative endeavor. When you work with the studio, which can be incredible in its own way, you have a lot of producers and people who are putting up a lot of money. They’re very, very careful with every little thing. When you work on an independent film, you’re working with a writer and a director. It comes down to their singular voice and asking them, “What were you thinking at this point?” not, “What were you and twenty people who own this studio thinking you wanted this scene to look like?” and then finding that together.

PC: This film is so raw, authentic, and unapologetic, which we need more of. How have the safety and comfort of working with your friends and having those prior relationships allowed you to push the boundaries of storytelling and the choices that you made with your character?
Troian: It really allowed us to push each other. This film is definitely going to ruffle a few feathers. That’s what’s wonderful about it. I’m so grateful that I got to do this with my friends, particularly Cheryl [Nichols] who directed this. She’s a fierce woman who’s very opinionated. She has her own aesthetic. She knew what she wanted to do with this story. She got to do it. It was really interesting. Yesterday, she posted something about a very religious and conservative woman who gave a not great review of the movie. My inner girl was like, “Oh my God. No. Somebody didn’t like the movie.” But it’s like, of course that woman’s not going to like the movie. There’s pot smoking and swearing, and this woman’s pregnant.

This movie isn’t for her. In fact, it’s for all the women out there who feel differently, who are going to be mothers or want to be mothers one day and are not the perfect mom. They’re not the epitome of Instagram perfection. They’re going through this as themselves—as their authentic selves. I’m so grateful that we had a strong female voice in Cheryl as a director and who’s also my dear friend. She was able to be like, “No. This is what needs to happen in this film. This is the story that we’re telling. Let’s not deviate from that or be scared away from it.”

PC: Something else that I think the film does so brilliantly is that it balances comedy and drama. For you as a creative, is one more challenging than the other?
Troian: I hadn’t gotten to do a lot of comedy up until this film. There were always funny bits in the things that I did, but it was primarily drama. It was really wonderful getting to work with Will Greenberg, who’s also a dear friend of mine and who plays Sascha the doula, because he’s a great comedian. First of all, it was just great to be in scenes with him because Will tries to make you laugh. If I made it through a scene, stifling laughter and acting my part, then I knew I was doing my job. But it was really wonderful because I felt like I was in great hands learning how to do comedy with him because he’s so experienced. He’s so innately funny. He knows what he’s doing. He knows about timing. I would love to do more comedy. I’m just really grateful that I got to work with somebody who’s so funny on one of my first comedies.

PC: There are so many timely themes and messages within the film, especially with everything that’s going on in the world. What do you hope audiences take away after they see it? Is there a particular scene that you’re really excited for your fans to see?
Troian: There are so many scenes that I’m really excited for fans to see. I totally agree with you. It is totally wild timing to be putting out this film right now with everything that’s going on surrounding pregnancy and birthing. This is a movie about a woman who has chosen to go forward and have a baby, and she’s still having second thoughts about it. She’s still wondering if this is the right choice for her life. She is still very, very much afraid of the way it’s going to affect her in this relationship.

In fact, there’s one point in the film where we have a very real argument about how she felt pressured into having this baby and felt like the man that she was with (her partner in this film) was telling her that you’re getting older and if you want to have a baby it’s time or get off the pot. She decided to have the baby, but at the end of her pregnancy she still wasn’t sure if she had made this decision 100% on her own, and that’s really scary. That’s a wildly authentic and honest conversation that not a lot of people have seen. I’m very excited that we got to explore that and put it on film.

PC: There’s also a scene where your character is talking about the fears that she’s having with her pregnancy. As an actress, how do you prepare for those emotional moments? How do you get into the mindset for that?
Troian: How do I get in the mindset? Definitely, because I was pregnant, and there is a base fear in terms of you not knowing how you’re going to feel about the human being that’s inside of you. You know you want to do right by them. You know you want to protect them, but you don’t know how you’re going to feel about them until they are outside of your body. Even though I was pregnant with my second child, I remember that feeling very, very distinctly with my first child because I had never been a mom. That was the craziest thing for me about pregnancy and having a kid. You don’t have a practice run. Sure, you can babysit when you’re younger. You can change a few diapers, but you go from having never been a mother or a parent to having a kid.

That is the wildest set of life changes that I think a human being can go through. Truly. I remember that fear about how this person is coming into the world and I have genuinely no idea or expectation of how I’m going to feel about them. I had to remember that time for me to try to re-access it and then try to inhabit that as honestly as possible.

PC: Throughout your career, you’ve brought so many dynamic characters and stories to life. What is your vetting process like when you’re deciding what projects you want to be a part of?
Troian: Thank you. That’s a really great question. As I get older, I find I better understand what it takes to pursue a role. When I was younger—like we were talking about before, before I had kids—all I was doing was acting, living, breathing, eating, and acting. When I was in theater school, I was like, “I can do this scene, I can do this scene,” because I was dipping my toes in. It was about getting those little experiences. Of course, I wanted to try Lady Macbeth. I also wanted to try this Chekhov scene, and I also wanted to do that. It was just fun. Then as I got older, I started having more and more responsibilities and less time to accomplish those responsibilities. I started to become more selective about what I was going to set my intention on and put my energy and focus into.

So now whenever I pick up a role, I know almost immediately in my gut that I want to dedicate the next however many months of my life to this. Now it means that once I put the kids to bed in the hours before I fall asleep and wake up to help them again, that’s when I have to work on this character. I have to really, really want to be in that world. I have to want to know those lines and think about that backstory and wonder about these relationships. If it doesn’t excite me in that way then I know pretty quickly that I’m not going to be able to dedicate myself to it in the way that every role deserves.

PC: The beauty of art is that it creates a lasting impact on audiences. You and your husband have always used your platform to bring awareness to causes and issues that you’re incredibly passionate about. How did you discover your voice as an advocate? Have you always known that you wanted to use your platform to spread that message?
Troian: I discovered my voice because I didn’t know what to do with my platform. When I was on Pretty Little Liars, Twitter was up and coming. Then suddenly I had all these crazy social media platforms to reach so many people. It was something that I had never pursued or truly understood. There are a lot of people, particularly younger kids now, who go out and build a following. I have a lot of friends who are influencers, and they have gone out and worked hard for every follow. They have crafted content to elicit people’s attention and get them to follow their voice. I was in a really weird circumstance where I was on this show that was a juggernaut in terms of social media. The studio was like, “Look, there are going to be a number of fake accounts posing as you, so either you can create your own account or we can create an account for you. But either way, there will be a Troian Bellisario on Twitter and Instagram.”

I was like, “Well, I should be that Troian Bellisario.” That would be really weird otherwise. So then I was in possession of this app on my phone with which I could access so many people. The next question for me became: what the hell do I do with this? When the show was airing, most people wanted to hear me say watch Tuesday at 8:00 PM or this is what’s coming up on this episode. But when the show ended, there was this gap where I was like, “Well, what do I do with this now? Do I just delete it? Do I say goodbye to all of these people? I still have access to them.” Suddenly, I started to look at people in the world, issues in the world, and charities who were looking for access to a platform as big as mine.

It became logical for me to say, “This is a way to fill this gap. If I have access to this many people and this many people follow me and care to hear what I have to say then what I can say is, “Don’t hear me. Help this. Do you care about this? Here’s how you can get involved.” So that’s truthfully the origin story of my activism in terms of social media. It was just, “What can I do that’s the most productive and the most helpful with this incredible gift that I’ve been given?”

PC: Outside of this film, you also are working on a podcast. Is there anything you can tease about that? As you’ve explored new mediums and different facets of this industry as a director, writer, and producer, how has your work behind the scenes impacted what you’ve done on screen and vice versa?
Troian: Great question. The podcast is really fun. I’m working on it with a very close friend of mine, Josh Close. It’s a science fiction piece grounded in the not-too-distant future about, not AI, but OI, organic intelligence. It’s where people are sold and commoditized as companions, and friendship is basically bought and sold. Time with people is bought and sold, which I think is something sadly that we’re heading into. I’m very interested in that. That’s what you can look forward to in terms of that.

How has directing and writing affected my work on screen? I’ll tell you what, I wasn’t a very vain actor before I became a director and I am an incredibly less vain actor now that I have become a director. When you are directing, every second counts. Some of my best friends in the world are makeup people and hair people, but every second that they are fixing a stray hair or doing something else, that’s time, those are shots. I went from being like, “Okay, I don’t really care if you do touches, it’s totally fine” to “No, actively don’t inhibit the director’s process. Let’s just keep going.” Which is a really odd and funny place to be as an actor. Because sometimes I’ve had directors be like, “No, no, no, seriously. There’s like some spinach in your teeth. We can’t do the take.” I’m like, “No, it’s fine. You’ll fix it in post.” So that’s changed.

Then also just my appreciation for the process of understanding what a writer and a director are going for. I now know that before a director and a writer come to set they’ve thought about every little thing. If I have a question, it’s really, really important for me to bring it up to them. I shouldn’t assume, “Oh, they just don’t care about this.” It’s like, “No, they probably have an opinion about it. Let’s go talk about it and see why they chose red or why they chose this word instead of this word.” Because they might go, “Oh no, I genuinely don’t care. You can change it.” Or they might say, “Oh, that’s a really good question. Here’s why.” Then it’ll give me this gift of insight into the character. So yeah, just becoming more appreciative and aware of the collaborative nature of this medium.

To keep up with Troian, follow her on Twitter and Instagram. Watch Doula wherever you stream movies.